Dear Joel: We Do Know, But It’s Not What You Think

I saw just a short news clip of Joel Osteen after the shooting at the church building where he is the Preacher. He said something to this effect:  “we don’t know why terrible things like this happen, but we do know that God is in control.”

I beg to differ. I think it’s just the opposite on both accounts.

The truth of the matter is this: we do know why this happens but we don’t know that God is in control. And to make this statement is to make a faith profession that is real, honest and actual (“actual” in that I make such a statement as a person actually who claims Jesus as Risen and Lord).

We do know why this happened: the shooter had a mental illness, ethnic and religious prejudice and hatred and had access to deadly firearms. Of course, as I write this, the Public Safety Officials do not yet know a motive, but the point here is that there was a cause. We don’t live in a world of wondering bafflement. We live in discovery and identification. There is a reason and there are guns.

We don’t know if God is in control: it’s the ancient dilemma of theodicy: if God is all Powerful then God must not be Good because Bad things are happening but if God is Good and Bad things are happening then God must not be all Powerful. It’s the rabbit hole we run down because we want so badly to be secure and safe. But what ends up happening is that we push our responsibility for what can be controlled by us (guns, mental health intervention) off on God (“if only God would show up we could stop all this violence!”) and take the responsibility for what can only be controlled by God, our eternal destiny, and place it in our hands to determine (“if you only believe in Jesus Christ, you will be saved from all this mess, if not now, then later”).

So, actually, it’s not “we don’t know if God is in control,” it’s this: we do know that God is not in control of our daily comings and goings (and endings) and we do know that we have no control over our, or anybody’s, eternal future. In order to be safe and secure we abdicate responsibility we do have and usurp responsibility we do not have.

So where does that leave God? It leaves God hung out to dry, or, to put it not metaphorically, hung out on a cross of execution outside the walls of Jerusalem about the year 33 C.E. And where does that leave us? Standing there, here, with blood on our hands. We cannot put up with a God who calls us to radical responsibility for each other’s wellbeing and makes herself radically responsible for our eternal life.

And so, where does that leave us?

Sinners in the hands of a Loving God.